The men with the bows creep closer to the firelight in the clearing. Sheriff's men, foresters all, they move quietly through the night woods.
The witches' sentries have already died silent deaths, raising no alarm.
Now the hunters' chiefest quarry stands directly before them.
From the trees, they watch as he mounts the altar before his adoring congregation: naked, shining, tall. He raises his arms, and the singing begins. His antlers seem to touch the trees. Between them, constellations revolve.
The first arrow takes him under the ribs, the next in the throat. Five, six, seven arrows follow, in rapid succession. The witches begin to scream. Their god topples from the stone, like a star falling from heaven.
The witches scatter into the woods. The hunters ignore them and close in to finish off their prey.
There at the foot of the altar, they find him already dead: a sturdy peasant in a stag's-head mask, sprawled in an ungainly tangle of limbs, pierced through and through with arrows.
Thus was fulfilled the Ancient Law.
Fools: do they not know that the Horned dies for the life of the people?
Do they not know that he falls to rise again?